Poor user adoption is the silent killer of any CRM strategy.  And unless using the system is somehow unavoidable, the silent killer will haunt your initiative.

You can easily sidestep adoption issues by simply not giving users a choice. I don’t mean ‘use the system or else!’ That approach never works well. Rather, what I mean is, when you are planning your system, have it do something specific that can’t be done elsewhere.

Example A: If department A needs to communicate information to department B – ensure department B only reacts to information submitted through the system.  Problem solved.

Example B: If contacts (documents) need to be generated, ensure the system is the only place they can be created.

Once users get into this new forced habit of using the system for some functions, they invariable start to like it and begin using it for more functions. Sometimes you have to be creative, but it is worth it to eliminate adoption issues. There are some good examples on the Process Controls page of the My CRM Manager website.